Actually it does mix in SPD, GI, ELU for the offensive targets to get open. It just mixes them in slightly differently depending on the location, and really we are probably making too much of this and it will be answered more in the adjustments I am making for the "openness" of the receiver for the passing success, as we are really only talking about a different mix for short passing versus medium/long passing. Basically it decreases SPD a little in the mix in favor of ELU and GI for shorter routes. Where TECH and IQ come in to play is the consistency of the player running their routes, and this is something you can't always see on each play but could contribute to what appears a mismatch to go the other way.

I'm looking at tightening up the passing success for how open a receiver is as well as tightening up how open the receiver is based on match up. I'm also going to work on the cover influence and participation of players, especially S, on YAC plays. I think between those, we'll see a better contribution from player ratings in the passing game. I'll leave the ratings mix alone until those are in and we'll see where were are after that.

Posted by slid64er on 4/24/2013 10:48:00 PM (view original):Slider, can you please share this with Norbert via the forums? I cannot because I don't have an active paid team.

Hi Norbert,

I'm a beta tester for GD 3.0, but since I have no active paid for teams I cannot send this to you via the forums.

I just read the recent posts about coverage and there is a pretty big loophole in the logic.

The issue is that I can setup my formation so that a star WR is the only one that has "influence" in an area and then have all the other receivers drag the defenders to other areas. As far as I can tell, there is no way to counteract this with defensive settings because your approach to determining where the defenders cover is basically always like a zone defense.

I did this setup and although my QB and WR are not that great, I just throw deep to the one WR every play for some test games. In a test game, I just scored 160 points against the #1 team in this way while throwing for 1628 yards (1614 to one WR).

My team is Texas A&M Kingsville in Craven if you want to see how its setup.

While using this loophole might be fun for awhile, I think it would ruin the game.

This has the potential to be a problem.

My own personal experiences

1) In Romero NC game-I was losing at the half 13-7 (me as Occident vs LaVerne). I couldn't stop his ground game and he was stopping mine. I set-up an offense like the one suggested above (NDB with the TE and RB running sh and med and the WR deep and only throwing deep). I ran a test game and crushed him. I decided that I wasn't going to finish that game based on a glitch, but did switch to a pass offense on long situations with a NDB and RB,TE,WR all set for Sh/med routes. Squeaked out a win.

2) In Bava-I was leading NC semi game (me as Greensboro vs Methodist) by 3 points at the half. Ran a test game just before the 2nd half simmed (to see if there were any surprises) and was smoked giving up many deep bombs for TD's. I switched 1st and 2nd long settings to a heavy pass D and all coverage to deep. Seemed to stall Methodist enough to get the win.

3) I ran a test game against the team I played in NC game in Bava (vs Loras) with the offense I built but never used in Romero (NDB with the TE and RB running sh and med and the WR deep and only throwing deep). In the test game I smoked him 49-21. The NC game ended in a 4 point difference (20-16) with 2 heavy run teams slugging it out. The completions I checked in the test game included wide open bombs of 40, 50, 60 yards.

Posted by slid64er on 4/25/2013 12:38:00 PM (view original):I'm all for KISS. I think you set up one ratings mix for receivers and one ratings mix for defenders regardless of zone. Speed, GI and Elu are all important regardless of distance from the line of scrimmage. As it stands, since speed is minimized in the short zones, LBs can effectively cover WRs based off of GI. It's one thing to know where you have to be or what a receiver is going to do, it's another thing altogether to get there to defend the play, especially if there's no safety influence in the area. You bring up a point about slower receivers getting open short, but they aren't being covered by LBs, and if they are that's why they're open. And if that WR did have speed, would't the WR be even more effective?

If the defense is getting burned enough, maybe they should put the same amount of CBs on the field as there are WRs. LBs are not meant to cover WRs so why neutralize WR advantages to make this an effective strategy? We have different formation available to us on offense and defense, there should be advantages and disadvantages if there are personnel mismatches.

And I'm not just talking about passing. I've been torched by a trips running team using a 4-4 with all 4 LBs on the line. You would think 8 in the box vs 5 blockers (possibly 6 if the TE was set to block) would stuff the run and open up the passing game, but neither happened.

I just want to add this. I played MLB for quite a while. I never had anywhere close to world class speed, but I very seldom had a problem covering a WR "short"...or on a slant, short crossing pattern, etc. For one there heads were always on a swivel, or at least they better be, plus I believe I was a fairly intelligent player and usually knew where the play was heading in plenty of time to get there. It was much harder for me to cover a little "skat" back that would catch the ball in the flats, and I have no idea how hard it would have been to cover a burner deep. I never got close enough to find out! (LOL)

Posted by norbert on 4/26/2013 10:29:00 AM (view original):Actually it does mix in SPD, GI, ELU for the offensive targets to get open. It just mixes them in slightly differently depending on the location, and really we are probably making too much of this and it will be answered more in the adjustments I am making for the "openness" of the receiver for the passing success, as we are really only talking about a different mix for short passing versus medium/long passing. Basically it decreases SPD a little in the mix in favor of ELU and GI for shorter routes. Where TECH and IQ come in to play is the consistency of the player running their routes, and this is something you can't always see on each play but could contribute to what appears a mismatch to go the other way.

I'm looking at tightening up the passing success for how open a receiver is as well as tightening up how open the receiver is based on match up. I'm also going to work on the cover influence and participation of players, especially S, on YAC plays. I think between those, we'll see a better contribution from player ratings in the passing game. I'll leave the ratings mix alone until those are in and we'll see where were are after that.

It's not just safeties you need to look at for cover influence. CBs probably have too much influence and LBs not enough influence in coverage. If you sim a game using shotgun against 4-3, LBs make far less than 50% of the tackles on WRs. With CBs making well over half the tackles on WRs, it seems the CBs are getting way too much influence in being able to cover both WRs or the QBs are not smart enough to throw to the WR/LB mismatch.

Posted by slid64er on 4/24/2013 10:48:00 PM (view original):Slider, can you please share this with Norbert via the forums? I cannot because I don't have an active paid team.

Hi Norbert,

I'm a beta tester for GD 3.0, but since I have no active paid for teams I cannot send this to you via the forums.

I just read the recent posts about coverage and there is a pretty big loophole in the logic.

The issue is that I can setup my formation so that a star WR is the only one that has "influence" in an area and then have all the other receivers drag the defenders to other areas. As far as I can tell, there is no way to counteract this with defensive settings because your approach to determining where the defenders cover is basically always like a zone defense.

I did this setup and although my QB and WR are not that great, I just throw deep to the one WR every play for some test games. In a test game, I just scored 160 points against the #1 team in this way while throwing for 1628 yards (1614 to one WR).

My team is Texas A&M Kingsville in Craven if you want to see how its setup.

While using this loophole might be fun for awhile, I think it would ruin the game.

This has the potential to be a problem.

My own personal experiences

1) In Romero NC game-I was losing at the half 13-7 (me as Occident vs LaVerne). I couldn't stop his ground game and he was stopping mine. I set-up an offense like the one suggested above (NDB with the TE and RB running sh and med and the WR deep and only throwing deep). I ran a test game and crushed him. I decided that I wasn't going to finish that game based on a glitch, but did switch to a pass offense on long situations with a NDB and RB,TE,WR all set for Sh/med routes. Squeaked out a win.

2) In Bava-I was leading NC semi game (me as Greensboro vs Methodist) by 3 points at the half. Ran a test game just before the 2nd half simmed (to see if there were any surprises) and was smoked giving up many deep bombs for TD's. I switched 1st and 2nd long settings to a heavy pass D and all coverage to deep. Seemed to stall Methodist enough to get the win.

3) I ran a test game against the team I played in NC game in Bava (vs Loras) with the offense I built but never used in Romero (NDB with the TE and RB running sh and med and the WR deep and only throwing deep). In the test game I smoked him 49-21. The NC game ended in a 4 point difference (20-16) with 2 heavy run teams slugging it out. The completions I checked in the test game included wide open bombs of 40, 50, 60 yards.

I'm not really sure I see the problems with these, unless I am missing something about those match ups. If you face a team that sets up to stop your rushing and you set up a game plan to pass and are therefore more successful, I think that's what we want. If you set up a heavy pass defense with deep coverage and stop a guy that was throwing it deep (example 2), I think that's what we want.

I don't think the question is really about pass beating rush defense or vice versa, but really just how successful they are. There is a balance we have to maintain for the game's sake. It might be that deep passes against anything but heavy passing defense and deep cover is too successful. I am working on shoring up the passing logic for cover and pass success, so hopefully that gets us a little closer.

I understand the desire for the game plan strategy part of the game, where I have to anticipate your game plan and counter it, but I also don't want a "ha, I tricked you! I win!" sort of mechanic. Yeah, if you pass and he picks a rush defense you should be more successful, and if you have the better players you should probably win, but I don't want something that breaks the balance too much in favor of the game plan settings. The hard part is actually defining where that line is.

Posted by norbert on 4/26/2013 10:29:00 AM (view original):Actually it does mix in SPD, GI, ELU for the offensive targets to get open. It just mixes them in slightly differently depending on the location, and really we are probably making too much of this and it will be answered more in the adjustments I am making for the "openness" of the receiver for the passing success, as we are really only talking about a different mix for short passing versus medium/long passing. Basically it decreases SPD a little in the mix in favor of ELU and GI for shorter routes. Where TECH and IQ come in to play is the consistency of the player running their routes, and this is something you can't always see on each play but could contribute to what appears a mismatch to go the other way.

I'm looking at tightening up the passing success for how open a receiver is as well as tightening up how open the receiver is based on match up. I'm also going to work on the cover influence and participation of players, especially S, on YAC plays. I think between those, we'll see a better contribution from player ratings in the passing game. I'll leave the ratings mix alone until those are in and we'll see where were are after that.

It's not just safeties you need to look at for cover influence. CBs probably have too much influence and LBs not enough influence in coverage. If you sim a game using shotgun against 4-3, LBs make far less than 50% of the tackles on WRs. With CBs making well over half the tackles on WRs, it seems the CBs are getting way too much influence in being able to cover both WRs or the QBs are not smart enough to throw to the WR/LB mismatch.

There might be a problem with picking defenders. I'll check it as I'm adjusting the cover and pass success. I'm thinking it might be giving too much weight to CBs when picking cover for WRs. It does try to put CBs on WRs, but when there is a mismatch, like not enough CBs and extra LBs (like in your example), it should mix LBs in there just as much. I will check on that.

I just ran this test against Loras in Bava (Sr's have graduated since last game run). Greensboro beat Loras 37-20.

I would run more, but the test game feature seems to error after 1 run. And keeps erroring unless I exit completely.

Score

20

37

TOP

42:06

17:54

FIRST DOWNS

- Rushing

13

0

- Passing

7

10

- Penalty

0

0

EFFICIENCY

- 3rd Down

10-28

3-17

- 4th Down

1-3

0-0

PASSING

- Comp/Att

11/30

11/57

- Comp %

0.37

0.19

- Yards

138

417

- YPA

4.6

7.3

- TDs

0

4

- INTs

1

2

- Drops

2

5

- PDef

3

1

- Throw Aways

4

1

- Sacks-YPS

10-5.1

2-4.0

RUSHING

- Att

72

7

- Yards

168

-2

- YPA

2.3

-0.3

- TDs

2

0

- Stuff%

0.36

0.29

- 20+

1

0

- Long

49

4

RATINGS

- QB (1)

42.0

39.0

- OL (5)

47.3

49.8

- RB (2)

45.0

45.5

- WR (2)

47.0

45.0

- TE (1)

46.0

47.0

- DL (4)

42.8

48.8

- LB (4)

49.5

50.3

- DB (4)

45.0

45.3

here's a few of the Greensboro offensive plays

NDB vs 4-4: Joseph Burns takes the snap and drops back to pass. [Rush Defense - long cover]
The defense has heavy pressure on Burns. Burns doesn't see the wide open Waters at the L 39 (deep).
Burns can't get the pass off to Waters at the L 27 (deep).
Burns throws to Waters at the L 44 (deep). Waters pulls in the catch.
Robert Torres trips up Waters to bring him down at the L 29. 43-yard gain.

NDB vs 4-4: Joseph Burns takes the snap and drops back to pass. [Rush Defense - long cover]
Burns throws to the wide open Waters at the L 17 (deep). Waters reaches out to pull in the catch.
Waters is brought down by Raymond Thomas on a strong tackle at the L 17. 41 yards on the play.

NDB vs 4-3: Joseph Burns takes the snap and drops back to pass. [Pass Defense - long cover]
The defense is starting to get pressure on Burns.
Burns throws to the wide open Waters in the end zone (deep). Waters reaches up to pull in the catch in the end zone. 40 yards on the play.

NDB vs 4-3: Joseph Burns takes the snap and drops back to pass. [Pass Defense - BLITZ: Thomas - long cover]
The defense is starting to get pressure on Burns.
Burns throws to the wide open Waters at the L 43 (deep). Waters pulls in the catch.
John Barnes gets a hand on Waters to bring him down at the L 9. 55-yard gain.

I would say-if you have a lesser team facing a tougher team (esp in the playoffs)-just run this type of offense and hope for the best.

Part of what I'm working on should address this some. I'm reworking on the Open Result chances for the different zones and match ups, so there should be less "Wide Open" results. That should help this quite a bit. The other thing I'll be working on is the Throw Result which is based on the Open Result and the Pressure Result. I think that first play example has some elements that indicate it could benefit from this adjustment. The other thing from the first play example is the multiple targeting of the same player. The engine will not pick the target from the prior step, but when there is only one deep target and 100% deep targeting, it will stay on the same target. We have several options if we run into this case - force it to throw to a different zone, force it to throw to a different player deep, or keep it as it is.

I also thought I had code in there that if the pressure was to great, the QB couldn't throw deep on the first few steps. I'll have to double check that. The "starting to get pressure" text doesn't mean the QB is about to get sacked, but it does indicate that pressure should affect the passing results.

I think deep passes (and long to a certain extent) are going to be something to be worked on a little longer in beta. I can see all sorts of problems we have to work out. In 2.0, it's not much of a problem because you can only say Very Aggressive and that limits deep passing to about 15%, so it works by not allowing you more than a certain percent of deep passing. Opening that up to allow you to pass to your own distributions means it can be subjected to a much higher percentage of deep passing than we allowed before. The dilemma is that if you severely hit deep passing to balance the case where you throw deep every play, then it really hurts the chances when you only pass a few times deep within a game. In order to balance that, we'd have to put in some mechanics to tell just how much deep passing you are doing and adjust chances to keep them on track. Even with Long cover settings and pass defense and all of that, if we have the same chances if you throw 3 times deep or 60 times deep, you will run into balance problems. I'll have to think about that some more.

In the meantime, I'll work on getting these adjustments in to the engine so we can see where it stands after those, but I'm pretty certain we are still going to have some issues with the "always deep passing" set up.

I would guess part of the problem is that defenses can only defend long, medium and short while the offense can go very short to deep. This bears out when you look at int% for deep passes, they are not in proportion to the other distances.

IMO, you need to increase the gradations on defensive coverage and increase the influence when safeties are at the correct depth and decrease the influence when they are not at the correct depth. The safety influence should already be part of your passing update where you're adjusting influence and coverage.

I also think that sack% is off. IMO, they should go from the highest percentage at deep to the lowest percentage at very short. From what I've tracked, it's not apparent that this is happening consistently enough or with a wide enough spread.

Posted by slid64er on 4/29/2013 7:37:00 PM (view original):I would guess part of the problem is that defenses can only defend long, medium and short while the offense can go very short to deep. This bears out when you look at int% for deep passes, they are not in proportion to the other distances.

IMO, you need to increase the gradations on defensive coverage and increase the influence when safeties are at the correct depth and decrease the influence when they are not at the correct depth. The safety influence should already be part of your passing update where you're adjusting influence and coverage.

I also think that sack% is off. IMO, they should go from the highest percentage at deep to the lowest percentage at very short. From what I've tracked, it's not apparent that this is happening consistently enough or with a wide enough spread.

I like the point on sacks-Vsh passes-almost no sacks. But a deep pass offense should feel the sting of higher sacks.

And I like the idea of D pressure ruining this style of offense (aim for the fences and hope for the best).

I was also thinking that there could be something in the Defensive Formations page that determines how Safeties play-either in the box OR as deep as the deepest WR.
2 problems with that. 1) adds another layer of dificulty in a game people are saying is already complex, 2) don't know how it can be worked into the game.

And I have to say I don't envy you Norbert-seems like a vey difficult game to try and sim-while keeping it playable-while trying to keep it realistic. And any thoughts I have are not criticisms-just a realization that people will exploit features to win.

The Cover will take the "missing" location into account, so Long cover will also cover deep in a sense that the Safeties will also have influence in the deep location as well as long. Keep in mind this mostly affects Safeties as CBs will follow WRs wherever they go. Also, the very first look in a play will not allow cover for Very Short (behind the line) and will not allow a Deep pass. I think the exceptions are when the defense wins blocking on the outside that they can possibly cover on a pass behind the line. I will have to review this logic to make sure it doesn't create any glitch game plans and can handle things like 100% deep passing plays.

The Safety influence at the different depths will indeed be updated with what I am working on, so hopefully we see a little more response to the Cover setting.

There should be more sacks (and throw aways) on deep passes assuming it's tougher to get off a deep pass than it is a shorter one. This update should help some with that as the sack chance is also a product of whether or not the QB can get the ball off and that is a product of how open the target is and the target location. So with less "wide open" results in the deep location, we should see less chucking the ball deep and more having to deal with pressure.

What do you guys think should happen if the playbook is set to 100% deep (or 100% any location for that matter) and the QB takes a look deep and can't throw the ball to the target? What should happen on the next look? Should he continue looking deep or should it force another look somewhere not set in the playbook? What if the play is set to 100% deep and there is only one player set to deep distribution? How should it handle the next look if it just determined that one guy was covered?

There isn't any mechanic in there currently to keep track of whether or not a single player was covered in the last step. This isn't in there for a couple reasons: it will typically look to another location and another target in the next step (that mechanic is in there) and there is a chance that a player that was covered could get open later in the play. What falls through this crack is that case where a location is targeted 100% and a player is the target 100%. One thing we could do is if we are forced to look to the same player again, it will consider him covered again and require at least one more step before he could get open. That would make the single target, single location set up more risky.

If the 100% - 100% is what the coach wants, that is what he should get. No shorter options if they are not set up. It should also depend on the QB GI whether or not he lets a long ball go and face INT or INC, throw it away, scramble or get sacked. For deep passes it seems that if you don't get open at first, the S can keep you covered afterward (WR ELUS?)

Also - look at the game clock for long situations - I broke down a play that took a drop back, roll-out, pass and catch, broken tackle for 66 yards that only took 8 seconds (World record 60 meters is about 6 seconds - just running). Some of these multi-step passing plays that have the WR 40 + yards downfield still only knock 4 - 6 seconds off for an INC. May want to re-work the game time.